The wear of a rail is determined at a given load in railroad operation essentially by the strength or hardness of the rails. At present, railroad operators utilize mainly tempered steel with a minimum tensile strength of 900 N/mm.sup.2 for continuously welded rails. Herein the alloy elements carbon and manganese are available to the rail manufacturer for achieving the strength of the rails. In case of greatly increased loads or stresses, as they occur for instance at arcuate outer rails in curves, the tempered special grade additional alloys with chromium and/or vanadium having a minimum tensile strength of 1100 N/mm.sup.2 are also utilized.
As an alternative to tempered alloyed special grades there exists also the possibility to achieve high strength by a heat treatment of the rails after the rolling process. Generally, it is usual to limit the heat treatment to the regions of the rails in proximity of the rolling area. Such rails correspond in their chemical composition approximately to the rails with 900 N/mm.sup.2 minimum tensile strength, wherein the pearlitic texture is extremely finely laminar due to the heat treatment, with the consequence of a correspondingly high hardness or strength.